The musings of an Old School User Interface Designer in a post Web 2.0 world

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Best Pizza Ever

It was late afternoon during the lazy summer just after graduating high school before going off to college. Three friends and I had the munchies so we headed to New England Pizza in northeast Philly. We ordered a pepperoni pizza for the table and each of us got a grinder - a toasted hoagie - for you non-Philadelphians think Quiznos, for you Philadelphians forgive the comparison. The pizza came after we had finished our grinders so we got it boxed to go. Now this was not a really big pie but it fit into the glove compartment of my '69 Pontiac GTO - door closed! I drive a Prius now but those cars sure were fun.

We went about our nightly activities and eventually around 4:00 AM I dropped all the guys off and headed for home. As was my habit, I took a swing through the neighborhood before calling it a night. I turned on Layton Road - short gentle curve slightly downhill - perfect for the kind of last cruise driving you do at 4:00 in the morning. At the last house on the right I saw my older brother Eddie sitting on the stoop outside with his friend Michael. As I drove up Michael yelled to me that he had wanted a pepperoni pizza all night and my brother wouldn't go so now they were starving. I pulled over took the pizza out of the glove compartment - it was warm from that Pontiac V-8 - and we demolished that thing. To a guy who always wanted to impress his older brother - and more importantly with the kind of older brother who was always pulling for you - it was the best pizza ever.

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About Mental Models

Mental Models is written by David Simkin. I have been designing User Interfaces for over 20 years as the Principal at Mental Models (http://www.mentalmodels.com/) a boutique design firm in the Silicon Valley and New York.

My sweet spot is working with experts in a field where they are performing complex tasks (e.g. managing the energy grid, exploring complex data, providing customer support, providing IT services, etc.) and developing a mental model of those tasks. This mental model drives the design of a software application that is easy to learn, efficient to use, and allows the user to predict how to perform new tasks.